All women. Girls. With familiar faces.
Cordelia was there, beyond Willow. And Amy Madison. Her old friend Jennifer from Hemery High in L.A. Chantarelle. But the worst was the one in the back, the one even now making her slippery way past the others to the front of the pack, her long, wavy blond mane slicked back with rain.
“Mom,” Buffy whimpered, lip quivering.
She reached out for her mother, hoping to help somehow, and she realized with a jolt of horror that now she could see her hands. This wasn’t just a dream anymore. This was something else.
In that moment of realization, Joyce smiled. They all smiled, even the ones so far back in the dark that Buffy could not see their faces through the shadows. Then the lightning crackled across the sky again, illuminating the cemetery in sharp detail.
And all their faces changed. Eyes blazed yellow, features contorted, mouths hissed wide, rainwater now sluicing over jutting fangs.
Buffy screamed, tried to back up, to get away, but her feet found no purchase in the mud. She slipped and fell backward. She fell for a very long time, and when she landed, flat on her back, she was surrounded by walls of crumbling dirt. She lay in that open grave, in several inches of accumulated rain, and water poured in around the sides. But she knew she wouldn’t have time to drown.
Thunder rolled across the sky, and lightning picked out the faces bent over the open grave above her, peering down, leering with cruel intent. And then, above them, another face. Evil, yellow-eyed, vampire face. But changing, becoming human and beautiful. Becoming Angel.
“Buffy,” he said grimly. “There’s forever, and then forever.”
Before she could reply, the night sky was suddenly torn asunder, and her eyes were blinded by a flash of the brightest white light she had ever seen, and all the vampires were incinerated, exploding to dust. For just half a moment, there was a malformed shadow silhouetted in the light, and three pairs of red eyes glaring down at her from within the shadow.
Then they, too, were burned away from the light.
Buffy’s eyes fluttered open.
“Buffy, honey, wake up.”
For a moment, Buffy couldn’t breathe. She stared at her mother’s concerned expression and felt disconnected from her own body, from the waking world.
Then, suddenly, her breath returned, and she sucked air in quickly, as though she’d been suffocating. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and Buffy sat up, staring around her room with eyes wide. She picked up Mr. Gordo from the bedside table and held him tightly in her hands.
“Whoa,” she whispered.
“Honey, are you okay?” Joyce asked, reaching out to stroke Buffy’s wild bed hair away from her face.
Buffy twitched as her mother’s hand came near.
Joyce blinked and looked at her, coughing, a hurt expression coming over her face. Buffy shook her head in apology, let out another long breath, and reached out to pull her mother to her. They embraced briefly, and though she was the Slayer, though the darkest evils of the world cringed at the mention of her name, Buffy only started to feel safe in the protective harbor of her mother’s arms.
It wasn’t until after breakfast that Buffy began to dispel the anxiety that her dream had produced. During her shower, and while she dressed for school, she’d felt as though she were nearly sleepwalking. The horrible images of her nightmare did not fragment and dissipate as such things have a tendency to do. Instead, they lingered, and as hard as she tried to turn her mind to something else, her thoughts went back there, time and again, as though the hideous dream were a melody repeating itself over and over in her head.
Finally, though, when she came downstairs, ready for school, and noticed for the first time that the rains of the night before had given way to clear blue skies, Buffy began to relax again. Her mother had taken the time to make an egg scramble with ham and cheese and wheat toast for both of them.
“Rough night, huh?” Joyce asked as she handed Buffy the carton of orange juice. She had a tissue over her mouth, and she was still coughing a lot.
There was something in her mother’s voice that made Buffy look up and frown. “I’m okay,” she said. Her mom looked pale, and her eyes were rimmed with red.
“I know. I just thought, with that dream you had, your patrol must have been pretty dreadful.”
“That’s one way to put it. We ran into some out-of-towners who were a little more durable than your run-of-the-mill Sunnydale vamp. Kinda proves my theory about inbreeding around here. Anyway, their leader was mucho macha. Gave me bruises on my bruises, even with the whole no-Band-Aid-required bonus of Slayerism.”
Joyce looked at her bravely, trying not to seem as concerned as she already was. Buffy wished there were something she could do or say so her mother wouldn’t worry so much. But there wasn’t. Except, perhaps, in this case . . .
“I dusted her.”
Joyce smiled with relief. Coughed. “Well, that’s nice,” she said. “Want some more eggs?”
“No, thanks. And you’ve eaten so much yourself.”
Joyce shrugged. “I guess I’m not in much of a breakfast mood.” She wiped her nose and tossed the tissue in the trash.
Buffy sucked back the last of her juice and got up from the table, reaching for her bag. She kissed her mother’s cheek and headed for the door. When she was about to pull it shut behind her, she remembered that they were supposed to shop for shoes that afternoon. Her mother was going to take off early from work for some girl time. Buffy felt guilty, but she went back inside and poked her head into the kitchen.
“Hey, Mom?”
Joyce looked up, pausing with a tiny piece of toast halfway to her mouth.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what time I’ll be home this afternoon. I really want to go, but can I just call from the library when I have a clue?”
Her mother looked at her oddly for a moment, and then her mouth opened in a little “Oh.”
“You know what? I sort of forgot about that. I may be tied up this afternoon anyway.”
Buffy was a little hurt. She may have screwed up their plans, but at least she’d remembered them. With a shrug, she started to turn away.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Joyce said. “It’s just . . . I’m trying to get in to see my doctor this afternoon. I’ve already placed one call to her answering service this morning.”
“They’ll just tell you it’s a virus,” Buffy said, smile askew. “That’s all they ever say. Then they collect the bucks from the HMO.”
Joyce blinked and hesitated. Buffy didn’t like that hesitation. Not one bit.
“I’m sure you’re right. It’s probably nothing,” her mother said. “But I keep coughing.” She took a breath and went on in a rush. “Last night, I coughed up a little bit of blood, and —”
“Blood?” Buffy cried. “Mom, excuse me, why are you even calling? Get in the car, and go to the doctor. We’re not talking head cold.” Buffy paused, realizing how dire her words were. “I mean, I’m sure it’s nothing.” She backpedaled. “But nothing’s more sure than sure, you know? You can’t fool around when it comes to your health. You told me that about a thousand times, right?”
“And that was just last week,” Joyce said slyly, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Then she coughed again. “I’m sure you’re right, Buffy. It’s just a bad cold or something, maybe even bronchitis —”
“Which, okay, no fun, but not the end of the world,” Buffy interrupted, realizing as she did so exactly how desperate she sounded.
Joyce smiled. “You’re going to be late for school.”
Buffy nodded. Her mother was right. She turned to go, and just as she did, she saw her mother’s smile disappear abruptly. Buffy didn’t turn back around, didn’t try to catch her mother with fear and worry engraved on her features.
She didn’t want to see.
All day, she worried about her mother. She had come to school late and decided just to go in to see Giles when classes let out. Not that it
did her any good to attend her classes. For that entire day, her mind was completely preoccupied. Between her mother’s health, the events of the night before, and the awful dreams she’d had just before rising that morning, Buffy could barely remember she was even in school to begin with.
Several times, the teachers noticed. By calling on her for answers to questions she could not possibly have, given her lack of attention, they attempted to embarrass her. Buffy didn’t rise to the bait, paid no attention to the looks she received from other students in her classes. Her mind was simply somewhere else.
Until lunchtime.
“Saturn to Buffy,” Xander said. “Hello? Bonjour? Saturn to Buffy?”
As he slid into an ugly orange plastic chair with a plate full of baked manicotti on an ugly orange plastic tray, Oz raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Xander.
“Shouldn’t it be ‘Earth to Buffy’?” he asked.
Xander shot a glance at Buffy and pointed at her with his thumb. “You kidding?” he said. “Wherever she’s gone, it’s way past the point where she can receive the signal from Earth.”
“Okay, not defending herself, so ‘Hey!’” Willow said, frowning at Xander. “Buffy’s just, y’know, replaying the events of last night’s patrol and trying to decipher the mystery of the missing corpse. Not to mention getting an ID on these new vamps.”
Buffy smiled weakly and put a hand on Willow’s arm. “Thanks, Will, but Xander’s right,” she confessed. “I’m not even in the Milky Way. My brain molecules are drifting across the galaxies.” When she’d called to check in, her mother had told her she hadn’t been able to get in to see the doctor today. But she did have an appointment for tomorrow.
And now she was home, having left the gallery early because she felt too ill to work. My mother? Buffy thought. The workaholic?
“Case. Rested.” Xander looked smug.
“Ooh, but now we’re drawing you back,” Willow told her, sounding excited. “So, do you have any ideas about last night?”
Buffy shook her head. She really was drawing a blank. “Ask Xander,” she said. “He was there.”
“And I have the back brace to show for it,” Xander replied happily. “Or I should. They were tops in their infliction-of-pain-and-bodily-harm class at vampire college.”
“What’s up with the body-snatching thing? We got Dr. Frankenstein on our hands?” Oz asked out of the blue.
Of course, Buffy thought, with Oz, most everything comes out of the blue.
“Nah. We’ve been there,” Xander told him. “Someone was trying to build Cordy out of other women’s parts. Sort of. It wasn’t pretty.”
Buffy chewed her lip. “Gotta say, with all my heart, I have no clue as to what’s going on,” she said. “But the mysteries do seem to pile up quickly lately.” Buffy glanced at Willow. “Ready to play Nancy Drew?”
“Nah. She gets caught too much,” Willow replied.
“Cool!” Xander exclaimed. “Does that mean Oz and I get to be the Hardy Boys?”
“You’ll have to be a Hardy Boy,” Oz told him. “I’ve never been much good at make-believe.”
“Sad for you,” Xander told him. “It’s what I live on.”
They all looked at him, and Xander looked away sheepishly. “Okay,” he confessed. “Maybe sad for me. But I’m not bitter. Nope. My life is forfeit to my duties as weak, human distraction for cannibal creatures from Philadelphia. I don’t have time for make-believe.”
“Good to hear,” Buffy told him. “I’m going to need you tonight. All of you.”
“Very sound thinking, Buffy,” Giles said proudly, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Just what I had planned myself, actually. We don’t know if there’s any connection between last night’s two graveyard mysteries, and so we must assume none exists for the moment.”
“Are you sure it isn’t dangerous, y’know, splitting up?” Xander asked meekly, almost pleadingly.
“Well, of course it’s dangerous,” Willow explained to him gently. “But we’re up to the challenge, aren’t we?”
“We’re very much of the challenged,” Xander agreed. “Though I don’t know that anyone’s ever described me that way and meant it as a compliment.”
He leaned back in his chair at the library’s study table and glanced around, apparently hoping for someone to interject, maybe with the suggestion that Buffy’s plan was a bad one. But Buffy knew that despite any inherent dangers, it was the most logical way to follow up on the events of the previous night.
“Guys, there’s no reason to think this is connected to those vampires from last night. I don’t think either of the ones who got away was hiding a corpse in a coffin under his coat. Just in case, we’ll make sure you’re armed to the teeth.”
“Does that mean we get to play Commando Raid?” Xander asked.
“As retro-funky as that might be, I don’t think that’s where Buffy’s going with this,” Oz replied, with as much sympathy as he was likely capable of.
“Cordelia used to play Commando Raid with me,” Xander said wistfully.
“Too much knowledge,” Willow said in alarm. “Gonna have to cleanse soon.”
“With you,” Buffy told her. “But can we move along? Giles already talked to Cordelia before cheer practice. The four of you should hook up at the Bronze after dinner. Oz can transport whatever weapons you need this afternoon, keep them in the van. Just take your time, patrol all of the cemeteries.”
“All twelve?” Xander asked.
“Consider yourselves fortunate,” Giles broke in. “The mayor is considering charging visitors to our fair city for just that very tour.”
“No rush. Just look for anybody with a shovel. Digging after dark is a dead giveaway in the body-snatcher biz.”
“Where will you be, in case we need you?” Willow asked Giles.
“I will be here, attempting to see if I can find mention of either of these chaps, Konstantin or . . . Ephialtes, I believe you said, in the Watchers’ Journals.”
“And we’ll probably cross paths,” Buffy told Willow.“I’m going to patrol, see if I can track down these bad boys, find out what they’re up to, why they were so concerned about a newborn.”
“Perhaps you’d best go by Angel’s first,” Giles suggested. “With vampires with such strength and fighting prowess . . .”
“Backup’s good,” Buffy agreed. “Great minds think alike. And, coincidentally, so do we.”
Buffy rarely found Angel asleep, even when she went to his house during the day. There had been times when she’d roused him from slumber, and in those times, he’d looked so nearly human that the wishes and hopes that went through her mind in those moments caused her heart to ache. But for the most part, she would arrive, enter through the back as she usually did, and find him wandering quietly somewhere in the house. Perhaps doing his martial arts kata or reading an old book that had been out of print since before Buffy’s mother was born.
That was the real Angel, she knew. The sleeping Angel was just an illusion of normalcy. An illusion shattered if she looked too close. Then she might notice that while he slept, his chest did not rise and fall. She would see that he looked like a corpse, and she might be tempted to realize that in some ways . . . ah, but she wouldn’t allow herself to think in those terms.
Even now, as she walked across the broad expanse of lawn in front of the house, the sun still gleaming just above the horizon, throwing long shadows that hinted at the things that might creep about after dark, Buffy did not expect to find Angel sleeping. In her heart, she knew that he didn’t truly live in that house. More truthfully, the way he moved silently through its corridors and lingered in certain spots for long minutes at a time, it might be said that he haunted the place.
Certainly, such thoughts disturbed Buffy, when she allowed them to creep into her mind. But they were easily dispelled. All she had to do was look into Angel’s eyes, to see how much he cared for her, and everything else, questions of life or death, just disappe
ared.
But not tonight. For this evening, she found herself thinking about her mother. Buffy had checked in after school, but her mother still hadn’t spoken directly with the doctor. His office had promised to fit her in the next day, but they were going to get back to her with a time.
Whenever it was, it wouldn’t be soon enough for Buffy.
A fire burned in the hearth inside Angel’s house. It wasn’t necessary for warmth, though there was a cool breeze blowing outside. Nor for light, as it was not quite dusk yet. But it comforted him, in a way. He enjoyed the sound of wood burning, crackling. And when he leaned against the masonry around the fireplace, he could feel the heat of the fire through the stone, and it gave him a great deal of pleasure. Without the sun, without a heart beating inside his chest, there was very little warmth in Angel’s life.
The fire, and the stone, and holding Buffy in his arms.
Angel was a vampire. He didn’t need anything but blood to survive. But there were other things he needed to live.
He leaned against the stone fireplace, reading a weathered collection of short stories by Algernon Blackwood he had stolen from a bookseller in 1938. The author didn’t seem to have had any real understanding of the horrors that existed in the world, but somehow, Angel felt he managed to capture the essence of horror, of evil, and through them, the secret of humanity. Which was, of course, fear. Of pain and death and what lay beyond.
The fire crackled behind him, and the light from the sun began to diminish. When Buffy entered the room, he felt her presence even before she spoke.
“Hey,” she said, voice low, as though they stood in a museum rather than his home. “Good book?”
Angel smiled and slipped a battered leather marker into the pages before closing the book. “Ghost stories,” he told her.
Buffy looked at him oddly. “Can’t get enough, huh? Maybe it’s me, but if I lived in Norway, I’d go somewhere warm for vacation.”
“They’re just fantasy stories,” Angel said.
“Not my fantasies.”
He stood up as she approached, and then they embraced. They held on to each other like that for a long minute, until the intimacy of it began to become too much for them, too dangerous for them. They could love but dared not share their love, for fear of the consequences. But when Angel released Buffy from his embrace, she did not withdraw. Instead, she held him closer, tighter, as if she clung to him for fear she might drift away if she let go.
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